Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
Silence in his ear. Shit. Was the circuit broken? Or were the team behind him just as stumped by this as he was? Great. So, with no help coming from that direction, he’d have to take a command decision on this one and go with his gut.
Luke shook his head. ‘Must have missed it.’ He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of nonchalance. There was a long pause. Had he blown it?
For the first time in their conversation, Niamh smiled. ‘You missed it,’ she said, ‘because Craig Stephens doesn’t exist. That was the correct answer, Steve.’ She took off her glasses and leaned closer to the camera, her face looming unnaturally large and foreshortened on his phone’s screen. ‘Stand by and don’t go away,’ she said. ‘We’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.’ Her image disappeared.
Luke breathed out slowly and sat back in his chair.
‘Nice going,’ said the voice in his earpiece. Luke opened his mouth to say something in reply, but the ops director cut him off.
‘Ssh! Don’t say a word to me until this is over. We’ll need to purge your phone. Got to check they haven’t sent you spyware on that call. It could remotely activate the mike. Apart from that, keep it up, you’re doing great.’
It was a long fifteen minutes. When a further four minutes elapsed and there was no call back, Luke started drumming his fingers on the workbench. A delay could mean only one thing: they were having second thoughts about trusting him. Or someone in their group must be. Luke started to over-analyse all the answers he’d given, going back over them in his head, one by one. Then his phone lit up. They were back.
‘Okay, Steve. We’d like to meet you. Tonight. You said you weren’t far from London, right?’
Luke nodded.
‘So we’ll send you an exact address in a moment. Be there at eight thirty p.m. Don’t be early, don’t be late, and do NOT bring anyone else. Is that clear? And, Steve?’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t fuck about with us. Or it will go very badly for you. D’you understand?’
She didn’t wait for his answer. The connection clicked off and the call went dead. Suddenly the room was full of people as the technicians surged in, taking his phone away for analysis while others disconnected his earpiece and mike. Then Angela came up to him, before he’d had a chance to get up from the prop workbench.
‘Good job, Luke,’ she said, placing a maternal hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re in.’